This post was published long before the Mists of Pandara Expansion.
The tips and techniques explained here may be outdated.

Affliction: more scribbles

Learning to beat the drum

I think.. the affliction dot rotation is complex because we have two different drums. That is, we have two competing cast sequences. In order to achieve 100% uptime we would need to be able to weave both of these together. Wow.. we’re starting to sound like BC Hunters.

The 15 second drum
On the first hand we have Unstable Affliction, Siphon Life, Immolate

For every 1 Siphon Life I cast, I cast 2 Immolate.
For every 1 Siphon Life I cast, I cast 1 Unstable Afflictions.

Everytime I try and combine the drums I end up either with something ugly and horrible to maintain (no way I’m going to remember it) or I lose uptime (mostly 3 seconds lost on Haunt in order to refresh it at a dependable location). I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do about it.

The part that I left out of the post.. it that I massively suck at playing the drums. I tried it like twice with Guitar Hero.. and it was epic fail. And that was a straight beat. I think I’m going to need a significant amount of practice at Warlock drumming to not suck.

Add to that.. My non-boss DPS is sucking ALOT. I think on trash I’m now at 550 dps.. and on the boss I can pop up to 900-1k. Annoyed at that. And was really hoping for higher.

Yeah, my wife plays a lock and she has been having the same problem with non-boss dps. We’ve been doing kara both pre and post patch and with things dying so quickly post patch her trash dps is hurting. On bosses she is competetive with our BM hunter and myself (rogue) but on the trash she falls way behind.

We’re going to spend some time on her rotations in the coming days, but when trash dies so quickly there is only so much she can do.

I feel your pain with the DPS (I’m pretty decent at RB drums tho). We did gruul’s and two TK bosses last night. I was raid buffed around 1100 spell power, only doing like 600 DPS on trash. Much higher on bosses, around 8-900. I’d have to go back and check my recount for real numbers, that’s just what I recall. I was third on the damage meter at the end though, which I like because at least that means I’m killing things (I was also one of the more poorly geared).

I’m not exactly sure where I should be, but I’m pretty sure I’m not there :-/.

Does it really matter what your DPS is in trash? I mean… if it’s dead, who cares, right? Think of it this way… the rest of your band (raid/party) gets you through some of the verses (trash), but when star power is activated (boss), you totally rip it up getting the 8 times bonus!

If your group was having issues getting through trash, that would be a different story.

Knowing practically nothing about playing Affliction… can’t you change up your rotation for trash and do Shadow Bolt spam or something? (Please don’t flog me if I’m completely wrong about SB spam for Aff Locks.)

I agree that DPS on trash is less important.. but it’s still my contribution. Pre-3.0 I was easily seeing 900 dps on trash and 880-900 dps on Boss fights. Now I’m seeing 500 dps on trash and 900 dps on Bosses.

I agree that the rotation on trash needs to be different than on bosses.. but right now SB spam is showing at about 750 dps. That’s very disappointing.